I have posted before about being startled the first time I went to my husband’s family gathering for Thanksgiving in Georgia. Not the 30 people by the time you added everyone up because my family was similar at it’s peak. Traditional turkey and ham as the meats were also the same and of course dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce, plus desserts. The unexpected part was also regular green beans, broccoli coleslaw, potato salad (yes), macaroni and cheese, corn casserole, collards, and seems like at least one other. Not that lots of food wasn’t required; I simply wasn’t familiar with that many different extras. I finally asked Hubby about it and he said people had certain favorites and the tradition seemed to evolve with everyone bringing those as well as the “regular” dishes.

We are hosting this year here for friends – a small group – and since others really do want to bring something, I am going to be smart about it for a change. One friend will do the green bean casserole, another has a wonder roasted brussel sprouts dish, and the final one has this delicious cranberry relish. I will handle the dressing, mashed potatoes, lots of gravy and rolls, plus  apple pie. The cranberry relish person also does lemon curd cheesecake. Since I don’t have to do much with sides, I’ll come up with some kind of nice appetizer. I’ll do something different from the ones we do for our New Year’s Eve party. BJs tends to have some fancy, frozen appetizers they are probably stocking and we do have a three-rack oven to use.